


Turn of the Century

by LLReid



Category: Bloodbound (Visual Novels)
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Male Character, Canon LGBTQ Character, F/F, Family Fluff, Fluff and Mush, Found Family, Grief/Mourning, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Female Character, Light Angst, New Year's Eve, New Year's Fluff, New Year's Kiss, Romantic Fluff, Same-Sex Marriage, There are (0) straight people in this fic, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Vampires, requests!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26873827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLReid/pseuds/LLReid
Summary: Inspired by; Tell Me by Johnny Jewel ft. Saoirse Ronan.~~~~~“We’re jumping into the ocean whilst fully clothed, come on,” Adrian said without elaborating on why anyone would do such a thing.“Awesome!,” Anastasia laughed as she looped an arm through hers. It never ceased to amaze her how excited her wife was to do simple things like this, she really had no business being this adorable. It was simply fact.“It was Lily’s idea,” Serafine shrugged. Far be it from her to veto a stupid plan.Kamilah scoffed and looked down at her perfectly tailored suit. When she spoke, her words were really more of an irritated grumble, “I am wearing Armani haute couture.”“Who peed in your Cheerios?,” Lily pouted.She sighed and moved her mouth to Anastasia’s ear and whispered, “This is exactly why you should’ve let me bring my daggers. She has somehow drank twelve cocktails in the past hour and now wants to drown herself and us in the process... this seems like a knives situation.”
Relationships: Kamilah Sayeed/Anastasia Sayeed, Kamilah Sayeed/Main Character (Bloodbound)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 46





	Turn of the Century

**Author's Note:**

> I mixed a few prompts again for this one ✌🏻😗
> 
> PROMPT 1: please consider making the "Hawaiian get away" that the gang should be going after the events on BB3 plsssss
> 
> IG PROMPT 1: pls do another bb family vacay your disneyland fic was amazing !!!bonus points if kamilah is stabby and talks alot about her daggers!!!
> 
> IG PROMPT 2: Kami x Annie new year’s eve but really far in the future and there still super in love. Fluffy.

There was only enough time in the final minutes of the twenty-first century for one last dance, and Kamilah was glad to be dancing it slowly with the love of her life on the deck of Adrian’s latest super yacht that was anchored just off the coast of Hawaii. Her palm pressed into the small of Anastasia’s back as the past hundred years collapsed into a pile of mirrors and buttons and frivolous shoes, just as the floor of the twentieth century had given way a century earlier and disappeared in a red cloud of brick dust.

There was no time to order another drink or worry about what was never said, not with the soft classical orchestra music sliding into the sea as it crashed against the side of the boat and all attention devoted to humming whatever it was they were playing. Tonight, the lion of contentment had placed a warm heavy paw on her chest. All she felt was peace.

She still couldn’t quite believe that this was her life, that a single century had been so transformative. She’d welcomed in the twenty-first century alone in New York, she may have been surrounded by people but none had known she had been contemplating throwing herself into the coming dawn. Now here she was, seeing it leave, on a family vacation to somewhere she’d been only once before, as a married woman who didn’t have to hide who and what she was any longer. She was surrounded by the people she loved most. Happy.

Even after more than two thousand years of living it still seemed only yesterday she used to believe there was nothing beneath her skin but light. If you cut her, she would shine like the stars blazing overhead. But now when she stumbled upon the sidewalks of life, she skinned her knees. She bled red — no differently than anyone else.

It seemed the rarest strokes of luck lay in not getting what you thought you wanted but in getting what you have, which once you had it you may be smart enough to see was what you would have wanted had you known. A glorious reality check, of sorts. This, she realised, was what happiness felt like. True happiness. The kind she felt all the way to her bones. It was moments like this that brought her the sort of peace she’d never known, that made her realise that you only lived once, but if you did it right, once would be more than enough.

“I still don’t see why I couldn’t bring my daggers,” Kamilah whispered in her wife’s ear, pouting as petulantly as she could possibly manage as other couples Adrian had invited to his New Year’s Eve ball danced around them. She was — as Lily had been relentlessly reminding her since the mid 2010s — whipped. So whipped she’d been convinced to attend this party without a single blade on her person, all whilst their friends had teased her about her whippedness. “I could have strapped them to my thighs and no one would have known the difference.”

“No stabbing,” Anastasia laughed, nipping lightly at her bottom lip. “The whole point of being on a vacation is trying to make you feel peaceful. We all need it after everything we’ve been through. Blood, killing, war, those are all non-peaceful things that we’ve seen far too much of in the past century. Isn’t there any other hobby you like the same way you like your knives that you could focus your attention on while we’re here?”

“Swords,” the ancient vampire said after a long moment of simply gaping at her wife’s beauty. Anastasia in a black gown that left nothing to the imagination was like having a loaded gun in her hand — so impossible to stop thinking about that it drove her to distraction. She imagined this must be sort of like how Anastasia felt in her abilities, given that she was born with invisible eyes that could never close, her visions always interrupting her train of thought at unexpected moments. She cleared her throat and continued, “I also like swords.”

“Sweetheart, I adore you but I’m starting to think we have a problematic issue of interpersonal philosophy here.”

Kamilah huffed and rolled her eyes, she was far too amused for her own good. “I’m a warrior,” she said. “Lysimachus and I were warriors from the time we were small. I didn’t have many dolls, I had miniature weapons that I used to behead the dolls people had the audacity to present me with. I slept with a wooden sword cradled in my arms until I was ten, then I replaced it with a real one. The first songs I learned were the songs soldiers sang as they marched into battle to defend Egypt. I know exactly what brings me peace, and it isn’t necessarily sandy Hawaiian beaches and fancy yachts.”

Anastasia looked at her levelly. “So you’re saying that what brings you peace… is sharp, pointy weapons.”

“Now you get it.” She smirked and pressed a kiss against her neck. “And you, of course. And our garden. A sharp knife, my plants, and you are all I need in order to be happy. You holding a beautifully crafted blade in the garden may just make me combust with joy — not that this is me dropping hints about my birthday or next year’s Dark Solstice or anything.”

“Mhm, of course it’s not. Maybe I could even tease you a little with that beautifully crafted blade,” Anastasia said as she suggestively dragged a perfectly manicured fingernail down her neck. “I could even wear something slutty and a nice collar for you whilst I let you fuck me in any way that filthy mind of yours can think of, because I’m so nice like that.”

Kamilah shivered and bit down on her bottom lip, a surge of pleasure pulsing in her most intimate areas at the thought. “You know what hearing you talk like that does to me.”

Anastasia grinned and moved her mouth toward hers. The first touch was just that — a gentle touch. A teasing, tempting softness. She licked her lips and her grin deepened.

"More?,” she asked.

She curled her hands into her waist length ginger hair, pulling her closer. "More.”

Anastasia scraped her teeth against her pulse and she moaned like a whore in church without a care who heard her. To be fair, in her long life she’d never actually heard a whore moan in church, but she had a feeling it sounded a lot like the unholy sounds pouring forth from her mouth. Her brain couldn’t process one logical thought. Anastasia’s mouth was roaming north, up over her jaw, gently sucking at her skin. The things this woman could do to her... finding her had been like finding someone she hadn’t known she had spent more than two thousand years searching for.

Because of this wonderful woman, she’d had wild adventures in every corner of the globe. She’d made her first group of real friends who’d become her family. She’d broken free from her past, and found out what it would mean to love someone and be loved in turn. Because of her, she’d been truly alive for the first time in her life. And now that she’d lived and lived well, when that unknown time finally came she knew she would be ready to die for something she believed in and the person she loved with every part of her soul.

“Do you remember the night Lily Turned?,” Anastasia breathed against her neck. “Who’d have thought we’d end up here.”

Kamilah hummed at the pleasant memory as she twirled her beneath her arm and then drew her back, flush against her body. “Do you know what I miss the most? That night. It was one of the best of my whole life... even if Lily did die and I threatened to kill you. I tend to skip over those things when I reminisce and focus on the conversation we had.”

“And what about the innocent girl you once sat beside and had coffee with on that night? Do you miss her too?”

“She is still here,” Kamilah answered, caressing her face. “After everything, she is still here. That is why I stay.”

All around them Adrian’s party guests began ceremoniously counting backwards from ten as the century neared its end. She took a deep breath of briny air and released the woman she’d been a century earlier, all of her beautiful and terrible fears. She released them. And now, she didn’t know that broken person as herself any longer. Now, she was whole.

“I love you," Anastasia murmured against her lips as the fireworks from Big Island began exploding overhead. Her blue eyes twinkled at her in the darkness, like a star fallen from the sky and into her hands, seeping through her veins and swimming inside her blood and becoming every part of her. They were like clouds and storms and all the things she’d never understood about poetry and romance novels. “I'm happier right now than I ever remember being.”

“I love you, too.” Her voice was straightforward, affectionate, as she spoke between kisses. There was a dazed look in the Bloodkeeper’s eyes, a joy, that made her so vulnerable. Kamilah realised how little defense she had against her words. She loved so wholly. It was her nature. “You make me remember who I once believed myself to be, the version of myself I was on track to becoming before everything went to hell. You make me want to be that woman again. Right now, holding you, I, too, am happier than I can ever recall being. Even in my mortal life such joy always eluded me. Happy new year, my love.”

“Happy new year, Kami.” There was still something in the way she said her nickname that made her smile every time she heard it, a secret sweetness reserved only for her.

Kamilah’s eyes fell closed as she pulled her wife into another kiss, her hands wandering her body as their lips tumbled over each other’s. It was one of those rare moments when everything felt like it was exactly the way it was meant to be. When one happened to find themselves and their entire universe aligning in perfect synchronisation, and they knew they couldn’t possibly be more content. She was inside that very moment, and fully conscious of it.

She kissed her until they were both breathless, and it reminded her of how her chest had heaved after the peck that had been their first kiss as part of Lily’s perverted game that night on the train. That memory overpowered her now, taking her by surprise. She still remembered every last detail of it, almost enough to push away the lingering images of the uncountable number of kisses she’d been forced to share with the man who’d abused her. Her first kiss with Anastasia might as well have been her first kiss ever.

“Happy new year, you horny bitches!,” Lily squealed as she barrelled into them, almost sending them both sprawling into the hoards of celebrating guests. She was soon followed by Adrian and Serafine, who wrapped them up in a tight group hug before Kamilah could threaten to stab them with the knives she didn’t have.

“We’re jumping into the ocean whilst fully clothed, come on,” Adrian said without elaborating on why anyone would do such a thing.

“Awesome!,” Anastasia laughed as she looped an arm through hers. It never ceased to amaze her how excited her wife was to do simple things like this, she really had no business being this adorable. It was simply fact. This woman was mesmerising and of a bloodline even older than hers. She was required to be what she was made to be whether she wished it or not. Yet she swam against the current. She still liked to think that she could outrun her fate. She could not. No one could. Yet she found joy in such simple things.

“It was Lily’s idea,” Serafine shrugged. Far be it from her to veto a stupid plan.

Kamilah scoffed and looked down at her perfectly tailored suit. When she spoke, her words were really more of an irritated grumble, “I am wearing Armani haute couture.”

“Who peed in your Cheerios?,” Lily pouted.

She sighed and moved her mouth to Anastasia’s ear and whispered, “This is exactly why you should’ve let me bring my daggers. She has somehow drank twelve cocktails in the past hour and now wants to drown herself and us in the process... this seems like a knives situation.”

The Bloodkeeper absentmindedly traced a finger along her collarbone, then headed south stopping at her heart. She felt it pounding through her skin. “Trust me, you don’t need them to be intimidating.”

“Intimidating enough to get out of whatever this bizarre ritual is?”

Anastasia huffed. “Not a chance, babe.”

“As you wish.” She sighed, a smirk twitching at her lips as she caressed her face in both of her hands. She was beauty, inside and out. She was the silver lining in a world of darkness. She was her light — the sunshine of her life. “I’m really much too fond of you to deny you your hearts desire... even one as frivolous as this. But just so we’re clear, you’re replacing my suit.”

“Done,” beamed Anastasia.

“That’s the spirit!,” Adrian cheered, clapping her on the back as he removed his shoes and expensive watch. “Start the new century as you mean it to go on.”

She glared at him. Swimming was the very last thing she wanted to do whilst wearing Armani, even if they were in Hawaii. Drowning him? Maybe. “You just love that I can’t stab you for pissing me off right now, don’t you?”

He smirked at her. “I don’t have the slightest clue what you’re on about.”

She sighed and kicked off her own shoes, casting a glance upwards at the ebbing quarter moon and the stars scattered like a handful of salt across the faraway sky. From this far out at sea they could see all the fireworks illuminating the island on the horizon like the sizzle of newborn stars. What was it about fireworks that still made her stop and stare? They made her think about everything and anything of meaning, of the ﬁerce magic emerging in her life. She was a witness to a ﬂexible eternity, the evolving past, and she knew that she and her found family would live forever, as dust or breath in the face of the stars, in the shifting pattern of winds.

The group joined hands and before Kamilah could so much as grumble about what was happening, she was already flying off the highest deck of the yacht. Lily yelled, at the top of her lungs, “This is for you, Jax!”

The moment their bodies hit the cool water sense of calm enveloped her, a feeling close to rapture. Swimming was one of the best things in her life that she’d enjoyed since she was a child. It had never solved any problems, but it had done her no harm, and nothing — or no one — had ever ruined it for her.

Their laughter could be heard for miles when they surfaced and began splashing each other like a group of teenagers might. Their good clothes, ruined, but their hearts were happy. Anastasia reached out and touched her hand with her’s. She enclosed it in her grasp as Kamilah drew her close to her. And just like that, she was linked with her again, even after all this time she could still feel the pulse of their bond and depths of their love through their hands, like a wave of magic. Of something meant to be. The feeling still brought tears to her eyes.

“He’d have appreciated that, Lil,” Anastasia concluded, her eyes glimmering with unshed tears. It still hurt every day, the absence of someone so important who was once there. The initial pain of his death may have faded, but now they were all left hanging on to the ghosts of his words and ideals. All of them, in their own way, trying to live a life he would be proud of.

“Indeed, he would,” Kamilah added, gently kissing her wife’s temple as the water lapped at their bodies. Suddenly the ruined Armani suit didn’t seem all that important.

They all shared a smile and a long moment of silence as they remembered their fallen brother, carrying his memory with them into the new century he never got to see. It was almost like they could feel his presence there in every heart he had touched, every person he had lifted up, every street and alley way New York that he had changed in the few years of his life. He was their light, and they all carried love for him, still, that would remain in their hearts until the day they met again. They would hold him there and protect him there, grieving what they never had, cherishing what they did. They all still wished that he was there. They all would go on missing him for as long as they continued to draw breath.

Time healed all wounds. But not this one. Not yet.

To love another was to be afraid. To have a family was to be afraid. To love was to be frightened, deathly terrified, that something would happen to those you loved. To love was to think of the possibilities, and if your heart clenched with each thought? That was love. And love enslaved us all, for you could not have love or the joy of family without fear.

Kamilah lost track of how long they spent in the ocean, floating on their backs with linked arms and staring up at the sky. At the stars and the fireworks that continued going off until dawn began painting the horizon. The ancient vampire had never looked more beautiful than she did then, vulnerable yet invincible. When the fireworks streaked over the orange sky, her dark eyes shone like pots of gold.

“Wine?,” Serafine smirked as they helped one another back onto the boat, none of them noticing their wet clothes too much.

“Am I breathing?,” Kamilah deadpanned.

“Wine it is.”

“Good morning, sunshine!,” Lily beamed, throwing an arm around Anastasia’s shoulders.

Anastasia blinked up at her. "Morning, sulfuric acid."

"Bitch, what?,” cackled Lily.

"Well, isn't it just kinda wrong to call a vampire sunshine?”

“So sulphuric acid was naturally the first alternative that popped into your mind? What a fucking nerd.”

“It’s a good alternative,” Adrian agreed. “That was a very creative display of intelligence, Anastasia.”

“Thank you! At least somebody gets it!,” Anastasia giggled, giving him a high five.

“You two are so extra.” Lily doubled over laughing. “What the fuck?”

She, Serafine, and Adrian all shared a smile of pure satisfaction as Lily and Anastasia fell into the sort of silly conversation that they were somehow no better at following than they were a century earlier. For a small moment, she fixed her eyes on the friends she’d known for centuries, telling them silently everything that she’d never say to them aloud. How odd it was to truly think about how much joy these two had brought to their lives, how much closer they had brought them, how it was like they’d been there from the very beginning.

No matter what happened in the future, no matter where their paths took them in the new century, this moment would always be theirs. In this new world some still hated them, thought them outlaws with too much power. Some feared them, thought them demons to burn at the stake. Some worshipped them, thought them the chosen ones of the gods — thought Anastasia an actual living, breathing god. But regardless of what they thought, all knew them. Everyone knew that to openly show any disrespect for Anastasia meant instant death at Kamilah’s hands.

None of them were saints. They could all do better.

It might’ve been horrendously idealistic for someone her age, but as she looked around at her family she vowed to herself to make the coming century a good one. There was once a time when darkness had shrouded the world, and the darkness had a queen. But now? Now she wanted to be better. Each day meant a new twenty-four hours. Each day meant everything would be possible once again. She would live in the moment, die in the moment, and she would take it all one day at a time. She would continue to walk in the light.

  
~ fin.


End file.
